Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 1; January 2000
Letting students write to each other across the class
( the exercise Ewa refers to below is one in which the students freely write each other short letters across the classroom. They write and deliver letters, and they answer letters received. The teacher joins in, writing to as many students as possible and responding. There are no set topics. The only level you cannot use this technique with is pure beginners. With post-beginners you can get them to write mixed mother tongue and target language letters, eg:
Dear X,
I am muy happy de escriber you esta letter…."
For more techiques like this one, see Letters, Burbidge et al., Oxford 1996. )
Dear Mario,
I've tried that letter-writing exercise with my students and it worked out fantastically.
They enjoyed the whole idea of exchanging opinions without the teacher's control. I've also noticed that
my positive attitude, more praises and smiles, helps them enormously to both develop as human beings and improve their English. I just can see from day to day the effects of my and their work.
Ewa Konopka
Poland.
Dear Editor,
My letter is a poem:
Oh, No, Teacher, you got it all wrong.
I just realised how we never learnt to think in English
and why we could not write in English without fear of making mistakes.
Hate: when you introduced the word 'hate' to me
in English you were in such a hurry to show me
that it was a verb, a transitive verb but it could also be intransitive
and the past tense looked like 'hated' and
the past participle was also such and such and you moved on
to write on the board the tricky 'hatred' -noun of 'hate'-
not to be confused with 'hated' and then the adjective of 'hate'.
And you yourself never did tell us one thing
you hated in your life. Not one thing. There was no time.
It was when I read Seymour Papert, a renowned scholar at MIT
through the Internet, writing how he grew up
in South Africa….
" I grew up in South Africa and one things
I learned to hate was all forms of segregation.. "
He went on and on, saying what and why he hated
It was then that I relearned the word 'hate and
I picked up the word "segregation" so surely without looking up
in a dictionary, No need to.
The I learned to say----
I hate, growing up, being taught English in Taiwan
by teachers, who could not say what they hated and I became
a stutterer in English and not knowing why…
I hate the segregation of Native and Non-Nativeness;
I hate the blind fear you harbour in yourself secretly and carefully
about using English---- yeah, not to lose face----;
I hate that you did not use English to communicate
anything about yourself, about your feelings thoughts and
We never got to do so and learned how it is to say
'I hate', in English.
You did teach 'Grammar' and 'Rules'
as if they were the only guarantees that would save me
against ' losing face', or 'losing' out-in exams.
But do you see what we might lose in life's journey
Beyond winning exams and saving faces?
I hate that people around me are trying to make me into
someone like you, make me believe that we could only
be someone like you,
Who are willing to judge and be judged by
grammar and rules all through out their lives of using English
because of the segregation of Native and Non-Nativeness.
Oh, No, Teacher, you got it all wrong.
I have found my voice-in English; have you found yours?
In life's long journey, I know I have won my share of using English
without fear of segregation.
Christina Chang , Taiwan.
